


leaving tomorrow (what do you say)

by sweetwatersong



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bedside Vigils, F/M, Partnership
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-20 23:37:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16565294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetwatersong/pseuds/sweetwatersong
Summary: In the hospital he waits, and she breathes, and it's a long night sliding slowly towards morning.





	leaving tomorrow (what do you say)

**Author's Note:**

> The first portion of this was written for a long-ago be_compromised prompt, _Cause I want nothing more than to sit outside of your door / And listen to you breathing / It's where I wanna be, yeah_. The second portion was written as a follow-up at some point after that.
> 
> Title and other lyrics courtesy of _Cups_ by Anna Kendrick.

_When I'm gone, when I'm gone_  
_You're gonna miss me when I'm gone_  
_You're gonna miss me by my hair_  
_You're gonna miss me everywhere, oh_  
_You're gonna miss me when I'm gone_

The moonlight filtering through the window begins to slowly turn everything shades of white and gray, running over the bandages on Clint's knuckles, the livid bruises on his cheek. In the shadowed white light he sits with his back to the hospital room door and wishes Natasha would open it up and look down at him, with that slow and amused and beautiful smile, and ask him what he thought he was doing. It's a good question, and he knows the answer. He's trying.

He's exhausted past the point of breaking, past all trying but he is, he's trying, because his best friend and his life is hanging on with a ventilator and an IV drip behind this door, is hanging onto her own life by threads and fingertips. It hurts to feel, hurts to remember, but for the sake of her he pulls off all the numbing layers he's built up, all the defenses, lays it all bare and sits with his hands on his knees and his head bowed and lets the ache in his muscles remind him that he's alive, that she's alive, and that means hurting because he's broken and unable to fix her, hurting that tastes like blood and dust and the last dregs of a coffee from twelve hours ago, hurting like this is good.

Clint Barton doesn't cry, not anymore, and hasn’t in a long time. The weight on his chest and the sound of her breathing (breathing, breathing, keep breathing) make him tired all the same.

"Do you remember," and Clint's eyes open to see Natasha crouching in front of him, one hand reaching out slim and slender in the moonlight to ghost above his knee, "that time in Bulgaria, when everything went sideways?" Her voice is soft, the gleam in her eyes pale as starlight. It has to be a dream because the door at his back is still solid and unmoving, because she's uninjured, because the universe has never given him what he wanted and it wouldn't start now by waking up his partner.

"Everything always goes sideways in Bulgaria," he tells her, worn out enough not to feel more at the sight of her, and focuses on the play of light and dark on her skin. She half grins because he knows she would, and there is something sharp and feral in her expression.

"I thought you cut me out," she says, still balanced on the balls of her feet. "I thought you wrote me off and left me in the cold."

"Yeah, I remember," Clint replies, smiling half-heartedly despite himself.

"I cornered you in that office," Natasha continues, "ready to put a bullet between your eyes, and you said-"

" 'The way it works is, I'm never going to let you down unless you choose to walk away,' " he finishes, gaze skirting the edge of her shadowed face just in time to catch how her smile softens and changes.

"Everything does go sideways in Bulgaria," she murmurs, "but you know what? That's where I found a way to go forward."

He opens his eyes to see a hallway full of shadows, the moonlight slipping away in the hours after midnight. And in the mixed light, never truly dark but painted all in grays and whites, Clint takes a breath, takes another, and keeps on breathing.

-

She wakes at all once, choking on something lodged in her throat, alien and anchored and cutting off her air. No, not just her throat, her _windpipe_ , and as oxygen hits her lungs she scrambles to get it off, get it out, her hands clawing at the plastic held around her mouth. For a moment there is nothing but the animal panic and the distant thought of _they had to put me on a ventilator, Jesus Christ,_ and then through it all breaks Clint's voice, rising with concern as he says something she doesn't catch, - _tasha, Natasha, someone get a nurse in here hold on, hold on, I've got you -_

And she knows him, she trusts him, beyond all reason and fear she trusts this man with her life, so she suppresses the terror and feels his hands wrap around hers, calloused and warm as he works around her stilled fingers.

When the tubing slides free, bruising and pale and plastic, Natasha drinks in the cool air like it's her first breath in a long time.

Maybe it is.

For one blessed moment she just breathes, eyes closed, letting the terror work its way out of her system, trying to regain the thread of her thoughts and time. At her call comes the memory of her blood-slick hands sliding over Clint's vest, the haze of blood loss and the agony of those last few moments.

Of the thought _I'm going to lose him._

Natasha reaches out blindly, lifting a shaking hand because her breath hitches again at the thought - and he catches it, holds onto it, brings it up to his chest to be cradled there so she can feel the rise and fall of his lungs and the rhythm of his heartbeat, caught between his killer's hands and his warrior's heart. Caught where she has always been.

"I thought I lost you," he says, and his voice is breaking and just this side of desperate. She waits for the glare of the overhead lights to fade so she can look into the lines of strain and scars and years that the first rays of sunrise are slipping so neatly into.

_He's so beautiful._

And for a moment she just breathes, breathes with him, in and out and together, and there is a warmth in her chest that she can't express with the rawness in her throat.

"Didn't walk away," she whispers, her voice barely able to carry that much, but the soft sound must make it far enough. As the room brightens with the warm yellows and oranges of daybreak, something terrifying and reassuring and hers, all hers, grows in his eyes.

He dozes the rest of the day away in a chair by her bedside, head pillowed on the mattress, and she runs the fingers of her free hand through his hair, humming softly to herself in the comforting air of a new day.

_I've got my ticket for the long way 'round_  
_The one with the prettiest of views_  
_It's got mountains, it's got rivers_  
_It's got sights to give you shivers_  
_But it sure would be prettier with you_


End file.
